My former employer provided ms-based cell phones to my group. I don't remember the name of the model, but to my dying day I will remember how much I HATED this horrible piece of crap!
It hung up, spontaneously rebooted, generated a few BSODs, displayed "unable to load.dll" (or something similar), and was horrendously slow to boot up. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Having been bitten once, I would never, ever, under any circumstances use a ms-based cell phone again.
Second, the overwhelming amount of entertainment that is available 7x24 from an explosion of different types of devices sadly means that many, many more people have become consumers and many, many fewer people are producing content of any form (and by "any form" I mean, especially, knowledge and not simply entertainment).
I attribute the dumbing down of America to two main causes: greed (corporations want to sell you endless numbers of devices and all the entertainment you can afford, then when new technologies arise, sell you the same content numerous times (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.)) and laziness (it's easier to consume mindless entertainment than to learn something new on your own).
On a related note, I also find it disturbing that in spite of our spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually on education, today's students in America consistently place poorly among major industrialized nations. Citation: punch "worldwide rankings of students" into google (omitting quotes) and read some of the 84+ million hits.
... he sure has no problem adopting their bad english and combative tones.
Considering that Linus was born in Finland to a "family [belonging] to the Swedish-speaking minority," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds) IMHO his English is very good and, by comparison to the/. majority, it's excellent.
Get back to me when you speak three or more languages.
First distro was Slackware installed in Sep., 1996, on a 486-33 Gateway with ESDI drives (anybody remember those?). At work a couple of years later, I sneaked the first Linux box through the back door into a Fortune 500 company; this box and a sibling became DNS servers.
Switched over to Red Hat in 1999, also played with (and discarded) Suse that year.
Diddled with TinyLinux, Knoppix, Fedora, and several other distros over the years, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is my favorite for work and home.
Having declared a favorite, however, I recently installed Slackware 4.0 at home to diddle with a tcp/ip protocol, so I've come full circle in 16 years.
police state in the title of your post reminded me of a quote from "The Man Who Broke Purple" by Ronald Clark:
"The first important change in organization came in 1949 with the creation of the Armed Forces Security Agency, which, as its name implies, was responsible for collecting and disseminating intelligence at the strategic level for all services. So well did the new system work that three years later it was decided to expand the organization into the newly named National Security Agency, the octopus that today handles intelligence and cryptography for virtually all U.S. agencies, that has extended its activities to surveillance of Americans at home and abroad, and has been built into the central agency essential for the running of any police state." [emphasis mine]
OP: The U.S. needs to push more resources into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education because technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers, said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and executive vice president.
Is it just me or, with 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, does this smell really funny?
I consider Obama to be significantly better at Bush at managing the economy...
You must have missed the news reports of greater than 8% unemployment for more than 40 months, millions of home foreclosures, the downgrading (twice) of America's credit rating, a debt which exceeds sixteen trillion dollars and grows every second, 23 million unemployed or underemployed, and all this during Obama's watch. How is this managing the economy?
In a previous life, I was a programmer fluent in at least six languages plus several ALs plus some microcode. I also taught introductory programming in two colleges.
Many professional programmers I've worked with should have chosen another profession. To require all employees to "write code that will be used in production" is lunacy and will be receive the epic failure label sooner rather than later.
... aircraft carriers are great for projecting power against an inferior enemy, not as much when facing a sophisticated foe.
Has no other/.er been inside the former Russian B-39 diesel attack boat tied up at San Diego? There are two photos of US carriers (Midway (ironically, nearby) and another (perhaps the Oriskany)). The interesting feature of these photos is that they were allegedly shot through the B-39's periscope.
I have no doubt if the B-39 was close enough to photograph these carriers, it could also sink them.
Slashdot Mirror
The market doesn't "hate" MS phones.
.dll" (or something similar), and was horrendously slow to boot up. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Having been bitten once, I would never, ever, under any circumstances use a ms-based cell phone again.
My former employer provided ms-based cell phones to my group. I don't remember the name of the model, but to my dying day I will remember how much I HATED this horrible piece of crap!
It hung up, spontaneously rebooted, generated a few BSODs, displayed "unable to load
I present two points that indicate people are noticeably dumber today than in the past (without precisely defining how far back the past is).
First, consider an entrance exam (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf) to Harvard. The document is dated 1899. Take this exam then draw your own conclusions.
Second, the overwhelming amount of entertainment that is available 7x24 from an explosion of different types of devices sadly means that many, many more people have become consumers and many, many fewer people are producing content of any form (and by "any form" I mean, especially, knowledge and not simply entertainment).
I attribute the dumbing down of America to two main causes: greed (corporations want to sell you endless numbers of devices and all the entertainment you can afford, then when new technologies arise, sell you the same content numerous times (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.)) and laziness (it's easier to consume mindless entertainment than to learn something new on your own).
Many people thought Idiocracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) was hilarious. I found it a disturbingly possible paradigm of the future.
On a related note, I also find it disturbing that in spite of our spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually on education, today's students in America consistently place poorly among major industrialized nations. Citation: punch "worldwide rankings of students" into google (omitting quotes) and read some of the 84+ million hits.
One more data point showing that microsoft, the devices and services company, is becoming irrelevant.
Paint, magic marker, or my personal favorite: dog poop saturated with indelible ink.
From the summary: NCAR believes it is the world's most powerful computer dedicated to geosciences.
And, still, it won't provide enough computational power to discriminate between natural phenomena and anthropogenic global warming.
Are these the same people who doubt the moon landings?
Probably not. The supply of people who will fall for the conspiracy theory du jour seems endless.
Let them [i.e., Germans] find their own way.
Dude, direct them to the U.S.! I realize you had some "recent unpleasantness" (in the local vernacular) with Germany, but we like Germans over here!
... he sure has no problem adopting their bad english and combative tones.
/. majority, it's excellent.
Considering that Linus was born in Finland to a "family [belonging] to the Swedish-speaking minority," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds) IMHO his English is very good and, by comparison to the
Get back to me when you speak three or more languages.
The CN Tower is a mere 147 storeys tall.
:)
I love Canada, but you guys up north spell some words funny!
I have a desktop computer 15 years from now?
I don't know about you, but the only way I won't have a desktop computer 15 years from now is if they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
If that's the future, count me out.
640 printers is enough for anybody.
It's Melancholia (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/)!
First distro was Slackware installed in Sep., 1996, on a 486-33 Gateway with ESDI drives (anybody remember those?). At work a couple of years later, I sneaked the first Linux box through the back door into a Fortune 500 company; this box and a sibling became DNS servers.
Switched over to Red Hat in 1999, also played with (and discarded) Suse that year.
Diddled with TinyLinux, Knoppix, Fedora, and several other distros over the years, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is my favorite for work and home.
Having declared a favorite, however, I recently installed Slackware 4.0 at home to diddle with a tcp/ip protocol, so I've come full circle in 16 years.
"Okay, let's see... I have to start with the boot loader... dit dit dah dit dah dah dit dit dah dit dit dah dah...
You kids had it so easy with Morse code! We had to use smoke signals. The bit rate was abysmal!
Keep in mind this book was published in 1977. This year Wired reported "The NSA Is Building the Countryâ(TM)s Biggest Spy Center" (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1.
/. and techdirt regularly report on governmental overreaching and grabs for power (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110714/09102815090/dhs-requests-300-million-to-purchase-even-more-devices-that-dont-work.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/07/195218/fbi-launches-1-billion-nationwide-face-recognition-system, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120106/03474817298/ice-propaganda-film-pats-itself-back-censoring-web-promises-much-more-to-come.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/07/151258/dhs-goes-ahead-with-pre-crime-detection-project, http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/14/233203/dhs-monitors-social-media-for-political-dissent, http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/12/1231227/gao-slams-dhs-over-biowatch-biological-defense-system). The list seems endless.
With all this governmental activity, who is going to protect the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens?
OP: The U.S. needs to push more resources into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education because technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers, said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and executive vice president.
Is it just me or, with 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, does this smell really funny?
I consider Obama to be significantly better at Bush at managing the economy...
You must have missed the news reports of greater than 8% unemployment for more than 40 months, millions of home foreclosures, the downgrading (twice) of America's credit rating, a debt which exceeds sixteen trillion dollars and grows every second, 23 million unemployed or underemployed, and all this during Obama's watch. How is this managing the economy?
I'm so glad you found the time in your busy schedule as a mental giant to post on Slashdot to remind us all of your moral superiority.
/. in months.
I don't know why RonTheHurler's posting brought out such a harsh comment. I thought his posting was the most informative I've read on
There are people who don't play angry birds or produce triple digits numbers of tweets every day and there will always be people like them.
I fear you are wrong whilst praying you are right.
Likely a few years from now an anthropologist will do a study about how fewer people are going 'postal' while waiting in line for some bureaucracy.
Why did Idiocracy come to mind while reading this sentence?
If you made an effort to learn some math, IMHO you are more likely to be a life-long learner.
If the only effort you made toward math was avoiding it, IMHO you are more like to be a life-long idiot.
We must preserve the bacon supply! I propose that we pack it inside large containers of helium, to preserve freshness.
We must preserve the helium supply! I propose that we pack it inside large containers of bacon, to preserve freshness.
In a previous life, I was a programmer fluent in at least six languages plus several ALs plus some microcode. I also taught introductory programming in two colleges.
Many professional programmers I've worked with should have chosen another profession. To require all employees to "write code that will be used in production" is lunacy and will be receive the epic failure label sooner rather than later.
... aircraft carriers are great for projecting power against an inferior enemy, not as much when facing a sophisticated foe.
/.er been inside the former Russian B-39 diesel attack boat tied up at San Diego? There are two photos of US carriers (Midway (ironically, nearby) and another (perhaps the Oriskany)). The interesting feature of these photos is that they were allegedly shot through the B-39's periscope.
Has no other
I have no doubt if the B-39 was close enough to photograph these carriers, it could also sink them.